Brad Keselowski left with the lead in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. left with a bad taste in his mouth.

After spending half of Sunday's Good Sam Roadside Assistance 500 fighting to regain the lead lap after a pit road speeding penalty, Earnhardt was in position for a decent finish until a massive wreck in the final corner wiped him out.

After NASCAR sorted out the finishing order skewed by the 25-car pileup, the driver of the No. 88 Chevrolet was credited with a 20th-place finish, dropping him to 11th in the standings, 51 points behind Keselowski, who ran seventh.

"If this is what we did every week, I wouldn't be doing it -- I will just put it to you like that," Earnhardt told reporters after the race. "If this is how we raced every week, I would find another job."

What Earnhardt finds most objectionable is the inescapable close-quarters racing that inevitably produces multi-car wrecks.

"The way we are going ain't the right direction," Earnhardt said. "There are plenty of engineers out there. I'm just a driver. There are plenty of smart people out there that can figure something out where, when one guy gets in trouble, we don't have 30 cars tore up at the expense of it.

"I don't care what anybody says. For the good of the sport -- I mean it's good for the here and now and it will get people talking today -- but for the long run that is not going to help the sport the way that race ended and the way the racing is. It's not going to be productive for years to come.

"I don't even want to go to Daytona or Talladega next year, but I ain't got much choice."

By the time Earnhardt gets to Daytona in February, however, the racing package will have changed. NASCAR is introducing a new generation of cars for 2013.

NO LOVE FOR THE BLUE DEUCE?

After the race, team owner Roger Penske and Paul Wolfe questioned the finishing position of Keselowski's No. 2 Dodge, which was fourth in the running order when caution froze the field after the last-lap wreck.

NASCAR rules, however, stipulate that a car will be scored where it blends back into line, even in the case of a wreck on the final lap.

"When it comes down to the end of the race, you freeze the field," said NASCAR vice president of competition Robin Pemberton. "You have that time, but we score it by all means. We have a lot of video, a lot of replay and things like that. It's about maintaining reasonable pace and other things. It took almost an hour to get our top 15 or so, and that's how we do things."

Pemberton said the Penske camp was satisfied with the explanation after viewing video of the final lap.

"Once they saw the video, they were good with it," Pemberton said. "If you froze the field, there was a car on its roof that would have been ahead of other cars, too, and that wasn't the case. As we walk through these things, everybody appreciates the effort that we took.

"Once we show them the evidence and where cars merge in, everybody understands. There's always a discrepancy or an argument over one spot here or there, but once you talk through things, everybody understands."

Kurt Busch's tenure with Phoenix Racing may have ended Sunday, but the ripple effect of his last ride in the No. 51 Chevrolet is ongoing.

Already on probation for two incidents earlier this year, Busch faces possible sanctions from NASCAR for creating a safety issue at Talladega.

After leading six laps of Sunday's race, Busch's car lost fuel pressure on Lap 99 and spun off the front bumper of Jamie McMurray's Chevrolet off Turn 2. Busch's car hit the wall and sustained significant damage.

After climbing from the car and removing his helmet, thereby breaking radio contact with his team, Busch got back in the car and attempted to drive away, as emergency equipment fell from the rear of his car.

"I got out of the car and surveyed the damage, saw that it could still roll so I jumped back in," Busch told a gaggle of reporters after NASCAR parked him. "I remembered, with these (fuel-injected) engines, they will run at 20 percent of fuel pressure to get it back to the garage. So I tried like heck. That is the competitor in me, which is the desire that I have and that is what gets misconstrued all the time.